River Island Gets Interactive for Fashion Week

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The last of the models has sauntered down the catwalk for London Fashion Week's AW15 season, but stylistas can still get a slice of the action via a world-first, virtual reality fashion film and app created for the River Island Design Forum. 

Created to mark the launch of London-based designer Jean-Pierre Braganza's capsule collection for the high street chain [pictured below], the groundbreaking campaign sees Blink Production's fashion arm, White Lodge and post house Happy Finish join forces to transform an already stunning fashion short into a fully interactive 3D experience for fashion lovers. 

The film itself [top] was helmed by BlinkInk's Barcelona-based directing collective Dvein on their first foray into fashion. A futuristic fairytale, it features kingfishers - one of the key motifs in Braganza's collection - flocking to the centre of a mechanical kingdom, where a powerful queen-like figure awakes.

To create the 360-degree virtual reality experience, the 3D film assets were repurposed for the Unity game engine, allowing users to follow the kingfisher on its journey through the metallic maze. The download-and-play campaign works via a free smartphone app combined with a customised Google Cardboard headset [pictured below], which River Island will be giving away free to customers who shop the collection.

Aside from the novelty factor of following the bird's every dizzying, vertigo-inducing swoop, the app also includes an 'augmented reality' bonus that lets you 'move' the avatar out of the film's confines and into the real world, where it can be scaled, snapped and shared on social media via a smartphone camera. 

To experience the campaign, download the VirtualRI app from iTunes or Google Play and shop the collection online or in-store.